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Michael McRobbie has been IU's president since 2007.(Photo: Matt Detrich/IndyStar)

BLOOMINGTON In the wake of its decision to rename an on-campus recreational facility that once honored a segregationist for Bill Garrett, its first Black basketball player, IU plans an in-depth review of all named buildings and structures across its nine campuses.

Among those: a Bloomington lecture hall named for former university president David Starr Jordan, an ichthyologist who was a prominent academic supporter of eugenics.

Speaking at the June 12virtual board of trustees meeting, IU president Michael McRobbie applauded the board for its decision to approve the renaming of the building once known as the Ora L. Wildermuth Intramural Center to the Bill Garrett Fieldhouse. The decision ended years of controversy surrounding the name of the building, after a 2007 Indiana Daily Student story revealed Wildermuth himself an IU trustee supported segregation.

Jordan Hall on the IU campus(Photo: Zach Osterman/IndyStar)

As the resolution I present today suggests, we have, in recent years, taken a thoughtful approach to the names of buildings on campus, McRobbie said in remarks delivered to the board on June 12. However, recent events in our country have demonstrated once again the awful weight that racial discrimination has placed on our citizens, and how that legacy can be perpetuated through those we choose to honor, in our public art, our icons, and the names we put on buildings.

He continued: "Indiana University holds fast to the fundamental values of equity and inclusion. We cannot, in any way, be part of perpetuating this legacy."

McRobbie will have the naming committee review all buildings on the nine IU campuses and remove names of anyone whose statements and writings are judged unworthy of the recognition.

In those same remarks, McRobbie specifically references Jordan, who was inaugurated as the universitys seventh president on Jan. 1, 1885.

Just 34 years old when he assumed the universitys highest office, Jordan was the first layperson to serve in the position and the youngest university president in the country.

He oversaw IUs move to its present-day campus, then situated in an area of Bloomington known as Dunns Woods. And he introduced the major department system within the university structure that laid the foundation for a more modern liberal arts curriculum.

But Jordan also believed firmly in eugenics, the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population's genetic composition, according to Merriam-Webster.

In his writing, The Blood of the Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races through the Survival of the Unfit, Jordan articulated a belief that humanity would thrive only if the fittest were promoted. He assigned the downfall of past civilizations to the corruption of that process.

David Starr Jordan, 7th president of Indiana University from 18841891(Photo: Moffett Studios)

McRobbies remarks last week mentioned Jordan by name, while empowering IUs naming committee to create whatever apparatus needed for its system-wide review.

We should not delude ourselves that this process can be carried out quickly or easily," McRobbie said. "There are hundreds of named buildings and structures across all the campuses of the university.Some of the historical figures for whom they are named, such as David Starr Jordan, are well known and currently being scrutinized closely. Others are obscure, and often all but unknown.

Jordan left IU in 1891 to become the first president of Stanford. He died in 1931.

His legacy is written across more than just Jordan Hall, which houses IUs biology department and includes its greenhouse.

Jordan Avenue, one of the Bloomington campuss primary north-south arteries, is named for him. So too is the Jordan River, a creek that runs through IUs campus. Jordan Field, IUs first football field, was named in his honor. Indiana University also helped endow the David Starr Jordan Prize, along with Stanford and Cornell, awarded approximately every three years to a young scientist who is making novel innovative contributions likely to redirect the principal focus of her/his field in one or more of Jordan's areas of interest: evolution, ecology, population, and organismal biology.

A California school board elected in 2018 to remove Jordans name from a middle school, citing his controversial beliefs.

Some will argue that weighing the views such figures may have sincerely held 100 years ago by the standards and values of the present is unfair, and that there may well be views that we think of as timeless and universal now that will likewise be poorly regarded 100 years hence, McRobbie said at the conclusion of his remarks on building names. Against this argument, however, are the claims of our faculty, staff, and students of color indeed, of us all who at this public university should be free to enter any public building without concern that it honors someone who would have held them in contempt on account of their race."

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

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IU to review all named buildings on its nine campuses - IndyStar